“I hail from Bhavnagar, Gujarat. I did my schooling from that city and did engineering from Nirma University, Ahmedabad. Post that, I worked with Medicus as a Marketing Associate prior to joining Merkle Sokrati, where I worked in the performance Marketing domain. I am currently pursuing my MBA from MDI Gurgaon, where I am a part of the Placement Committee. I did my summer internship with RB, from which I secured a PPI. I also hold a PPO from Amazon and will be joining their AFBP programme post my MBA. I am an avid reader and a Manchester United Fan.”
Name an instance where you wanted something and went out of your comfort zone to achieve it OR Tell us the biggest risk you have taken so far in your life.
"In 2018, in Facebook ads manager, only 50 ads could be launched at a time. While that is enough in most cases, in a case where the account is scaling heavily, and needs to launch 1000+ ads (assuming different targeting different cities different campaign goal), it becomes increasingly tedious and time consuming to do this manually. There are various third party tools that allow launching such ads, however due to a proprietary data of clients, we were not using the third party tools.
However, when I tried to find an alternative myself I found that Facebook had recently launched a new Ads Manager tool API and this could now be done by google sheets as well. So I just wanted to understand if we could do that inhouse, I talked with my manager that I wanted to take this up. I convinced our client on the basic model of working ensuring to them that this was an inhouse tool. I, however, had only had minimal scripting knowledge and did not know how to code ad settings into codes which would be eventually be read by FB Ads manager tool. I asked for a support from our tech team and my manager got an official project assigned. I along with a resource from the IT team used to work extra hours post daily work and on weekends. We took a month to build this in house tool ‘Hurricane” that could launch 200 ads, and that too in different ad sets. This was a blessing not just for my teams but for all the 8 Social Teams that were handling 100+ accounts in total. We could reduce the ads launch time from 1 full day to less than 1 hour. This increase in efficiency not only led us to dedicate more time in optimization of accounts, but also this quick turnaround times made all our clients ecstatic and trusted us with high spending campaigns. This was relatively simple but a breakthrough task that led to me earning the extra mile award in the social team for the year. Also, I was one of the quickest to be promoted to SBA in 9 months in comparison to 12-14 months, which is the average promotion time."
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act.
"I’d like to share an experience from my previous work experience Merkle Sokrati, where one of my teammates’ father had met with a paralysis attack and he had to go back to his hometown. He was looking for a two month sabbatical from the company, however, due to lack of bandwidth in the team to take up his accounts, sabbatical was not being approved. He was then deciding on quitting his job. To give a background of his responsibilities, he was the co-owner with me on the Swiggy account and handled 3 independent accounts. The two of his accounts could be transferred to two new joinee Business Analysis under the direct watch of Strategy Manager. However, his 1 account was into the online rental space, which was a troubled account with a pressing client. Moreover, Swiggy was our team’s biggest client so a lot of performance pressure existed there. However, I could see his plight and I did have a prior experience into handling online rental accounts as I was handling Rentomojo as well and hence I decided to take the account up along with his tasks for Swiggy. I stretched for two months in handling more clients and having more tasks delivered, and my gain was I turned a work colleague into a close friend!"
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
"I was supposed to audit a new account and then it would be assigned to my company along with 3 other agencies, who would compete for a long term contract. The account was a client which was into the arcade gaming space in Egypt. Since I had only worked on Indian clients till now, I wanted to have a brief consumer level understanding of the Egyptian market. One surprising thing I observed was that more than 85% of adults above the age of 45 years played mobile games. In India the digital literacy is still low, and was lower 2 years ago. So in my plan I decided to allocate 40% of the 5 Crore budget to above 45 years age group. And the rest of 60% to the other tried and tested age groups. Since, I knew that other agencies would be aiming for the same audience of lower than 45, our ads would not fight in the FB auction method of ad buying with them.
I presented this plan to my manager and she wasn’t convinced saying it was risky and we could lose the client if this didn’t work. However, I was confident on my research, and presented my manager with more data points and I requested to start at just 10L for the first week and then I will scale if the output was good. I got CPI of 15 Rs as compared to 20 Rs in younger category, that means, at 25% cheaper. Looking at the results, my manager gave a green flag to scale it higher. Our client were impressed with our agency and we scaled that to 25L a week and spent 2.5 Cr (50%) of our budget on this target group, even 10% higher than initially planned. With this, along with other things like better creatives and optimisation, our agency had the best performance by far and managed to bag the account. And it was a risk that did pay off!"
What is the one thing you can claim to have some level of expertise or depth of knowledge in - it could be anything - a subject, a sport, a hobby, a venture, an initiative which has led you to do deep work in that field?
"With my work experience, I have developed a knack of getting the best performance out of social media ads. Additionally, I am a Facebook Blueprint Certified Buyer. I have used this knowledge to freelance for NGOs on a pro bono basis for their fundraising. I am happy that I am able to make an impact with my skillset."
If 10 Million Dollars (approximately INR 75 Crores) is given to you to use it any way you deem fit what would you do with this corpus?
"Step 1 - Self-Security:
Considering Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I would first go for my own basic security amount. This would not only give a personal financial safety for me and my family but also ensure I am empowered to do better things.
Amount: Considering a simple yet happy lifestyle along with taking relevant insurance in a tier 1 city: 50K per month for my entire family for 4 for next 25 years is 1.5 Cr.
Step 2: With the remaining amount, I want to start a coaching class for graduate and undergraduate students. I would create a business with the model to service all economic classes of society and while this would be an entrepreneurial business into the Education space, I would also want to ensure that under the umbrella of this model, I am able to find right talents and willing to succeed individuals from underprivileged backgrounds who do not have access to quality coaching for national level entrance exams, to be given that coaching pro bono.
Amount: A vague figure of 10 Cr to start a coaching class, along with 10 Cr budget to fund the underprivileged. Total amount 20 Cr.
Step 3: I would like to use the remaining amount to fund the startups into the social space who are actually creating a positive impact on the country’s citizens and help them grow their business. This would not only help me work well with my income but also help me do my bit in creating an impact on the society.
Amount: 53.5 Cr."
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